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Imagine yourself back in 2002. The census for England and Wales, compiled the previous year, has just come out, showing the extent to which the country has changed. You decide to extrapolate from the findings and speculate about what the next decade might bring. "The Muslim population of Britain will double in the next ten years," you conclude. "White Britons will become a minority in their own capital city by the end of this decade." How would those statements by your younger self have been greeted? The terms "alarmist" and "scaremongering" would certainly have been used, as most likely would "racist" and (though the coinage was in its infancy) "Islamophobe". Safe to say, your extrapolations would not have been greeted warmly. Readers inclined to doubt this might recall that when...